Hillard made an inexcusably careless shot. It was under his hand to have turned an even forty on his string. He grounded his cue and stood back from the table. That was the way everything seemed to go; at tennis, at squash, at fencing, at billiards, it was all the same. The moment victory was within his grasp his interest waned. Only last night he had lost his title as the best fencer in the club; disqualified in the preliminaries, too, by a tyro who would never cease to brag about the accident. "I say, Jack, what's the matter with you, anyhow?" asked Merrihew, out of patience. "A boy could have made that three-cushion, his hands tied behind him." "It was bad," Hillard agreed. "Perhaps I am not taking the interest in the game that I formerly took." "I should say not. You lost me fifty last night. Corlis has no more right to cross foils with you than I have; and yet he goes in for the finals, while you are out of it. Where's your eye? Where's your grip?" Hillard chalked his cue silently. "And when I make a proposition," pursued Merrihew, "to ride to the Catskills and back--something you would have jumped at a year ago--you shake your head. Think of it! Through unbroken roads, nights at farm-houses, old feather beds, ice in the wash-basin, liver and bacon for breakfast, and off again! Snow or rain! By George, you had a bully time last year; you swore it was the best trip we ever took on the horses. Remember how we came back to town, hungry and hardy as Arctic explorers? Come on; everything is dull down-town. Where's your spirit of adventure?" "I'm sure I don't know where it is. Shall we finish the game?" "Not if you're going to throw it like this," declared Merrihew. He was proud of his friend's prowess in games of skill and strength, and he was wroth to see him lose all interest unaccountably. "Ten and a string against your half a string," said Hillard, studying the score. "I'll bet a bottle that I beat you." "Done!" said Merrihew. Being on his mettle, he made a clean score of twenty, five to go. "I can see you paying for that check, Jack." But the odds tingled Hillard's blood. He settled down to a brilliant play and turned sixty-one in beautiful form. There were several shots which caused Merrihew to gasp. "Well, it's worth the price of the bottle. If only you had had that eye last night! We'll have the bottle in the alcove at the head of the stairs. I want to talk to you." So the two passed up-stairs to the secluded alcove, and the bottle shortly followed. Merrihew filled the glasses with the air of one who would like to pass the remainder of his days doing the same thing. Not that he was overfond; but each bottle temporarily weeded out that crop of imperishable debts, that Molochian thousand, that Atalanta whose speed he could not overtake, having no golden apples. To him the world grew roseate and kindly, viewed through the press of the sparkling grape, and invariably he saw fortune beckoning to the card-tables.